A monochrome Night

Patrick Mason's functional and faceless production might work if it were a different play. Its clean elegance would suit a play of cold dispassion, perhaps a piece of political intrigue or intellectual discourse.

But this is Twelfth Night, one of the most comic, melancholic and lyrical plays in the language. And this is Illyria, a sybaritic isle of music and gaiety. How weird, then, to find our protagonists seemingly washed up in the atrium of a grand political or corporate structure, dotted with transparent plastic chairs and red petals.

The only hint we are given that this is anywhere near water is when a pair of orange air-sea rescuers enter to attach a bandage. Otherwise this could be Farringdon, Washington, or a 1920s European court.

I guess that's the point. But this play requires and deserves commitment: to the romance, the humour and the melancholy. There is no texture - an ice-blue light is cast over all proceedings like a Pizza Express awning. All contrast is lost, so the bawd and gulling of the subplot blends innocuously with the gender confusion of the main action.

The production is redeemed by lovely performances. Honeysuckle Weeks picks up where she left off in the front seat of Foyle's car with her delightful jolly-hockey-sticky androgyny.

Her Viola is beautifully honest, particularly when set against Orsino's declamatory bluster. Her Cesario, meanwhile, is a cocky brat-packer who is going to pieces inside, such as when she asserts that she is "all the daughters of my father's house" only to collapse slowly on "and all the brothers, too."

Matthew Kelly's Malvolio and Hilton McRae's Feste also stand tall, and deserve to be a part of a different play - the one where the director is sensitive to shades of pleasure and disquiet.

Twelfth Night, Or What You Will